NOLA Project's 'Cat' raises the roof at Tennessee Williams Fest

It is a paradox of drama that a play of a distant period can, at times, connect most timelessly with a contemporary audience by remaining resolutely true to its specific time and place. With its current production of Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” The NOLA Project proves the point with a staging that is meticulously detailed and refreshingly vital.

The 1955 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, which Williams often called his favorite among his works, opened Friday night (March 21) at Le Petit Theatre du Vieux Carre, in conjunction with the 28th annual Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival.

Even having seen two other full productions of the play within the past month and a half, director Beau Bratcher and a pitch-perfect cast draw the audience fully into the world of the Pollitt family, with all its sexual secrets, regrets, recriminations and scheming passions.

Bratcher unveils the power of the play, along with Williams’ genius, by keeping it firmly grounded in its own world — that of a wealthy family living on a cotton plantation in the Mississippi Delta of the 1950s. Making no attempt to modernize it by shifting the focus, the play resonates even more strongly as it shows how the characters — primarily Maggie and Big Daddy — are either trapped by or pushing the limits imposed on them by the social and sexual pressures of the mid-1950s.

CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF

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At the centerpiece is a brilliant performance by Cecile Monteyne as Maggie, who is struggling to save her marriage (not to mention her security) to Brick, the former college football star now more infatuated with the bottle than her body. A lithe beauty, Monteyne sleekly earns her title as Maggie the Cat with every graceful feline move she makes. She’s a Southern woman who is such an inherent flirt that she exudes sultriness, along with a playful sense of humor, even in fits of anger. Monteyne also conveys the fact that Maggie was once a poor girl. Having married well, her determination to hold on to what’s hers is fierce.

Randy Cheramie is a straightforward but mighty force as Big Daddy. Like Maggie, he was once poor — long ago. Now, he’s earned his moniker through his own efforts, and isn’t going to let anyone forget it. Big in every way, Cheramie’s performance need not play up the old Southern colonel act. He is direct and brutally honest and his presence is felt throughout, even when he is not onstage. Despite his audacious claims of despising everyone around him, his key scene with Brick reveals emotional, though bellicose, warmth.

As the sexually ambiguous husband, Brick, James Yeargain gives a performance of increasing intensity, one that begins with a disgusted disinterest in Maggie’s mere presence. In his confrontation with Big Daddy (a rare act of forgiveness and caring on Big Daddy’s part), Brick reveals his own self-loathing over the death of his friend, Skipper.

While Skipper’s sexuality is pretty clear, Bratcher keeps Brick on the fence as Yeargain’s anger and guilt is directed at himself, whether for his own sublimated yearnings, or betrayal of his friend. In the end, his submission to Monteyne’s Maggie is one of utter surrender.

Yvette Hargis creates a Big Mama of many layers. She is a randy and gregarious match to Cheramie. Completely a woman of her day, she is practical and pragmatic, fully accepting her place — along with Big Daddy’s cruelty — in exchange for the security and “good life” it affords her. Nevertheless, Hargis shows the emotional toll it takes, resulting in her parceling out her own love to select few members of the family.

Too often turned into mere greedy bumpkins, the roles of Gooper and Mae are more difficult to play than expected. Andrew Vaught and Natalie Boyd walk exactly the right comic line, acknowledging the near-caricatures the two represent, but never falling into cartoonish buffoonery. Vaught is believable as the dutiful, if hapless and unappreciated, son. His angry outburst in the end reveals the long-seething rage. Boyd’s Mae is no dummy; she also plays well the subtext that she and Maggie are much more alike than either would admit.

Jimmy Murphy and Jimmy deMontluzin add comic relief to the tense household as the preacher and the doctor. Mae and Gooper’s brats are energetically played by Catherine Sillars, Rachel Laufer, Atticus Piano and Margaret Lob. As cute as they are, Bratcher keeps them screeching enough to warrant Maggie’s frustrated description as “no-neck monsters.”

Bill Walker’s set is a major asset to the production, along with Shauna Leone’s costumes and Joan Long’s lighting. They all combine to allow the actors a real sense of place and an ease of motion. The period is instantly evoked as the audience enters the theater.

Though the Pollitts live on a plantation, they are not an old-moneyed clan from the antebellum South. Brick and Maggie’s bedroom is not furnished in massive rosewood and mahogany antiques, but a mix of pieces that would generally be of the time.

Of particular note is the use of the large mirror on the vanity, which often gives the audience another point of view of the action. It is one of the many details of the well-conceived vision of the entire production.